During our free-verse poetry unit, we'll study the intricacies of language for it's own sake. We'll make language as beautiful as it's possible for language to be. We will capture the essence of the meaning of life, whether that essence is reflected in finishing a marathon, climbing Kilimanjaro, or the feeling right before you finally ask out that SUPER cute dude in your science class that you've ALWAYS had a crush on. 
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...again, "writing" is a misnomer. We'll be "typing" free-verse poetry. It just sounds so dull and mundane. Insurance reports are typed. Poems are written. Maybe I'm a traditionalist...
The calendar above shares the proposed dates of our unit. While 90% accurate, keep logging into Dojo for daily updates.

Week One: An Introduction to Free-Verse Poetry

Like short stories. the first week of our poetry unit is devoted to planning our poems, and learning the prerequisite skills necessary to write amazing poems. Each day will follow a simple "I do," "we do," model to prepare students for the freedom of next week's "you do," writing days. We'll teach students all about sound devices, line breaks, and the significant differences between publishing a poem versus an essay. While much shorter, a good poem is just as difficult to produce, as students will find out.

Lesson Plans

Materials
Monday, 10/26/2020 - IXL Diagnostic
Before our poetry unit starts, we have to take a day to get kids logged onto IXL. It's a software we'll use occasionally to target exact weaknesses in ELA skills that students demonstrate.
Tuesday, 10/27/2020 - Survey of Free Verse Poetry!
Today, students will get their "first" exposure to free-verse poetry. While it's their "first" exposure, the diligent quotation marks are not without cause. They've read all of Inside Out and Back Again during our refugee unit, and that book is a master class in free-verse poetry. Today will mark our students' first exposure to poetry through the lens of a poet. They'll travel to and stop at numerous stations. At each station, they'll read and respond to the poem using what's known as an "It Says, I Say, So" protocol, and at the end of class, they'll answer a few questions on a Google Form to summarize today's learning. 
NextGen Learning Standards: 8R2, 8R3, 8R5, 8R6, 8R9, 8L5, 8L6
Wednesday, 10/28/2020 - Wait... wait! Don't tell me! Show me instead!
Today, we'll learn and practice one of the most important skills in any poet's toolbox: the ability to "show" an audience details instead of "telling" them those details. Picture the difference between a coworker "telling" you that their cousin got married over the weekend, and actually attending a wedding, and watching two people who love each other celebrate their union with everyone the love the most... It's a significantly different experience. They'll look at some informational Slides first, and then rock some JamBoard sorting.
NextGen Learning Standards: 8R3, 8R4, 8R6, 8R9, 8SL5
Thursday 10/29/2020: Breakin' Lines!
​If you boil everything down, and distill it to the finest possibility, line breaks are the single, most important difference between prose and poetry. In prose, we only hit "enter" to start a new paragraph. With a poem, we intentionally hit "enter" frequently, and painstakingly plan when that "enter" should happen. [Return] for all you Mac users out there... Today, we'll start class with an informational Slides presentation explaining how to use line breaks intentionally in free-verse poetry. Then, naturally, we'll practice adding line breaks to prose to create rudimentary poetry. 
NextGen Learning Standards: 8W3, 8W4, 8L5
Friday, 10/30/2020: The Karpie Method of Free-Verse Poetry
Welcome to "The Karpie Method of Writing Free-Verse Poetry!" It's a foolproof algorithm that turns simple sentences into simply beautiful poetry! Today, students will look at the Slides linked to the right (of if they'd prefer, they can watch the video embedded below). That's it! For once, there is no check for understanding! Just watch and reflect. I was feeling generous on a Friday.
​NextGen Learning Standards: 8W3, 8W4, 8L5
These two students use their annoyance with each other as the basis for their amazing free-verse poetry!

Week Two: The Art and Science of Sound

The first poetry week really is about mechanics, and general creative writing techniques that apply to poetry. The second week is all about the sound! Poetry needs to SOUND beautiful. It can't just make sense. Reading a poem should be experiential. This week will be all about learning and practicing sound devices.
Monday, 11/2/2020 - The Science of Sound
I know that poetry slams are the butt of every comedian's jokes, but poems need to sound beautiful, or discordant, or dull. Unlike an essay or a story, a poem's sound needs to match it's topic, and to make that happen, you need to employ sound devices. Today, students will be exposed to a series of sound devices, and then, we'll move into a sorting activity during which students sort examples of sound devices under their definition. They'll practice adding sound devices into the prose to which they added line breaks yesterday. 
NextGen Learning Standards: 8W3, 8W4, 8L5
Tuesday, 11/3/2020:  Alliteration and Assonance!
Greetings! The overwhelming feedback I've gotten from students is that it's very hard keeping up with the work on days that they don't see their teacher. I'm keeping it simple today. Students will watch the video of me teaching them all about alliteration and assonance, and then they'll answer a simple Google Question on Classroom. It will ask: what is alliteration and assonance, and why would a poet use them?
​NextGen Learning Standards: 8W3, 8W4, 8L5
Wednesday, 11/4/2020: Rhyme Time!
​Today, we're talking rhyme. Just like with alliteration and assonance, the goal isn't just to define the word rhyme. We're talking about using end rhyme versus internal rhyme. You'll start with a tutorial on what end versus internal rhyme sound like. Then you'll start brainstorming some rhyming words that can fit into the poems your write next week!
**My amazing co-teacher created this video for us. Because it was on her Loom account and not mine, I couldn't embed it like the other videos, but if you click the image above you can view the video just like mine.
​NextGen Learning Standards: 8W3, 8W4, 8L5
Thursday, 11/5/2020 & Friday 11/6/2020 - Time to Write our Poems!
Today, students will actually write their free-verse poems today! Originally, I had more activities planned, but with "The Transition" looming, I figured it would be best to use today to write the poems, and then Monday's  time together to look at some amazing examples, saving next Thursday for what I am going to call "Transition Day!" Today, I'll model the Karpie Method of Free-Verse Poetry step by step while students follow along, and at the end of class, students will have four of the five steps to writing a poem complete! All that will be left for them to do over the weekend 
​NextGen Learning Standards: 8W3, 8W4, 8L5

Poetry Writing Project

As important as the first week of our unit is in teaching kids how to write poetry, this week is equally important. This week is when the rubber meets the road. (As a marathon runner, I know rather more about the intricacies of the dichotomy of rubber and road than most English teachers, and I can tell you, it's usually a struggle!) This week, from a teaching perspective, is simple. Monday-Wednesday, students will write one poem each day. Thursday, they'll have a chance to finish, or revise their poems. Friday we'll enjoy the fruits of each others' labor. I personally cannot wait to read our kids' poems!

Poetry Description

This unit will end with the creation of a three-poem anthology. Each student will write three poems based on different parts of their lives. For example, I am a teacher, father, and bicycle mechanic. I might write one poem about each part of who I am. Those three poems will all be published in another giant anthology like the one from our Short Story unit, and students will have a chance to read and respond to each other's work.

Success Skills

Write poems that show intentional use of language to serve the purpose of the individual poem.
  • W 8.4, W 8.11b, L 8.5, L 8.6
Collaborate with peers to create, critique, and improve writing.
  • W 8.4, SL 1b, SL 2, L 8.3
Interpret and analyze poems by rubric success criteria.
  • RL 8.11, SL 2, ​L 8.3
Common Core Learning Standards

Poem Writing Timeline​

Monday, 11/9/2020 - Wednesday 11/11/2020

Each of these days will follow the same procedure:
  1. Share some amazing poems written the day before.
  2. Model the Karpie Method of Free Verse Poetry with a new topic. [This serves both as a reminder about how to use the tool, and a model for how quickly these poems can be written.]
  3. Structured work time to write one of the three poems in students' poetry anthology.
  4. Wrap up sharing anecdotal behavioral and poem-specific observations throughout class.

Thursday, 3/12/2020

Today we'll follow our peer-review protocol. Students will use the speed-dating protocol from the end of our Food Chains unit to share and receive actionable feedback based on the poetry rubric.
After receiving feedback, they'll have half the class to modify and improve their poems before finally submitting them for our whole-team anthology. (Then it's another long night of photocopying for Ms. Davis and I.) 

Friday, 11/13/2020

Students will spend the entirety of today's class in silence. They'll be nestled deeply in the tomes of their classmate's writing. They'll respond to the writing using the methods we modelled and practiced yesterday. ​
This year's "peer review" is actually a "self review" due to COVID-19. We roll with the punches.
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